Okay. This was crazy. “My dad isn’t in the mob,” she said, eyeing the stalks flying by outside the car.
“He was,” Jonny said. “That loyalty shouldn’t ever go away, right, Josh?”
Josh didn’t twitch. Did the guy even talk?
Brigid ran through scenarios in her mind. She was an HDD consultant, and she had a job to do. “What journal do you want from my father?”
Jonny sighed. “If you don’t know, then you don’t need to know. How about you shut up for a while?”
What an ass. Brigid inched closer to the door.
Jonny manacled his hand around her arm and yanked her toward the middle of the seat. “I don’t want to shoot you, but I will.”
“Banaghan will want proof of life,” Josh said, his voice a low rumble.
So the guy did speak. “Yeah. Proof of life,” she repeated.
Jonny tightened his hold until her skin bruised. “You can be shot and still be alive. In fact, the sight of you bleeding out would probably be decent motivation for the old guy.”
Brigid’s stomach rolled over. Her mind spun. She could deal with this. “It’s not my father you need to worry about.”
“Oh?” Jonny snorted. “I’ll admit that your boyfriend can fight, but the guy didn’t even have a gun with him. Not a good sign.”
“Fiancé,” Brigid retorted. Where had Raider come from, anyway? She hadn’t heard him leave the house. “Raider Times isn’t a man you want to cross. Believe me.” She almost stumbled on the false last name.
Jonny stiffened. “Raider Times?” He frowned toward Josh. “Isn’t that the guy—”
“Who left a business card after taking out Milo and Aiden at that bar downtown,” Josh affirmed, his cold gaze meeting hers through the rearview mirror. “This is interesting.”
Brigid swallowed and dove all the way in. “We were in town to see if my father would get us an introduction to Eddie Coonan. Raider has a business proposition.” Could she sound any more like a stupid female? Her voice shook, and that wasn’t part of the cover. If she stopped scrambling long enough, she’d probably start throwing up. “Surely you researched him.”
“We did,” Jonny affirmed.
Good. The cover they’d created for Raider showed him as a ruthless businessman who had no problem getting his hands bloody in truly creative ways. Maybe that would keep them from killing her. For now, anyway. “Yet you didn’t call,” she muttered.
“We had something else to do first,” Jonny said, his hand steady on the gun. His gaze ran over her again, turning calculating this time. “Our dive into his background didn’t show a fiancée. It sure as hell didn’t show you as the fiancée.”
“Raider likes to keep me under wraps, for obvious reasons. I think once he got to know me and found out about my father, his idea for a new venture with you took place.” She tried to simper but had to sniff instead. “You’re welcome.” If she moved to the left, she could punch his wrist, and he’d drop the gun. But could she grab it before he could? And if so, did she have time to shoot him before Josh did anything? He probably had a gun up there.
Jonny’s gaze narrowed. “Do you know where the journal is?”
She blinked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s in the journal?”
Jonny pursed his lips. “If you’re lying to me, you’re going to bleed. However, if you’re telling the truth, you might be of more use than I originally thought.”
She rolled her eyes. “Raider won’t negotiate for me. He’ll come in with knives flying and just cut out your throat. You have to know that from checking him out.” Just how good were the Coonan hackers? Raider’s cover was solid, but no fake ID would hold up forever.
They drove for about an hour toward the mountains, finally reaching a small dirt runway used for crop dusters. Rain sluiced over a small private jet at the end. She shook her head. “That’s crazy. There’s not enough runway.”
Josh chortled from the front seat. “You should’ve seen us land. Nearly hit that mountain.”
She eyed the gun pointed at her. Should she make a run for it?
* * *
Raider kicked his slashed tire, frustration roaring through him so quickly he swayed. Turning, he leaped over the creek and ran for the house while the fire crackled wildly behind him. Where the hell was Sean? Old-fashioned storm cellar doors were wide open on the side of the house, and he ran to them, jogging down crumbling stairs where blood drops and rain mingled.
He paused at the dank bottom. A bulb hung suspended from the ceiling, swinging and revealing rickety shelves holding cracked and discarded canning jars. He ran past them and turned left, into another room with a heavy metal door.
